Singer-songwriter music is becoming a lost art nowadays.. Growing, if nothing more severe, more synthetic and inorganic by the day. So, it’s naturally very refreshing when we come across someone who’s into bringing back that style of music, in its most intimate and organic ways.
Karen Harding is a Melbourne, Australia songstress who’s into folk and soft pop. Her music is generally based around her acoustic guitar, ethereal waves of atmospheric strings, and reverberated angelic vocals. Her single, Drive Away, is a part of her 4-songs EP, which will be released one song at a time, with a new song dropping every month. Written in the depth of the Covid-19 lockdowns, the desolation of that very difficult time clearly shows in the howled choruses and the generally dark music with eerie strings hanging in the background almost constantly. The mix has a very roomy and intimate quality that will put you right next to the singer in a warm, quiet pub somewhere. One major achilles’ heel to point out, though, is how out of tune the vocals go at some point during the choruses, which sound disruptive and negatively affect the flow of an otherwise very fluid and soaring piece of music.
Karen Harding has a ton of potential, and I’ll be waiting for more songs from her upcoming EP, hoping for a less desolate tone, and a more in-tune delivery.